Stephan: Look at the map. Notice something?
And consider this from the report. Generally, obesity prevalence declined as level of education increased. Adults without a high school degree had the highest self-reported obesity (about 39%). Adults with some college education or high school graduates (34%) came next, followed by college graduates (25%). An estimated 30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations have been attributed to obesity.
Nearly 36% of adult Texans reported having obesity in 2020, according to new federal data.
The state joins a fast-growing list of 15 others where adult obesity prevalence is at or above 35%. The number of such states has nearly doubled since 2018 — up from nine states in 2018 and 12 in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
In addition to Texas, other states that recently reached the highest obesity prevalence are Delaware, Iowa and Ohio. Those join Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The new data reveals disparities among people who have obesity; at least 35% of Hispanic residents in 22 states have obesity, with Michigan and Indiana sporting the highest rates; at least 35% of Black residents have obesity in 35 states and Washington, D.C., with California, Louisiana, Georgia and the Carolinas with some of the highest rates.
Every state and territory of the U.S. has more than 20% of adults with obesity, the CDC notes. It’s a staggering statistic given adults with […]
Stephan: The weapons death merchants to stay prosperous require America's psychotic gun obsession to be passed on from generation to generation. I was part of an earlier generation seduced in this way. At 11 I became a Boy Scout, at 12 I got a 22, as did many of my friends, and that summer went to the NRA -- then a very different nonpolitical organization -- gun safety class my troop sponsored. At 14 I got a 4/10 gauge shotgun. By then I was obsessed with marksmanship, had built a 50-foot target range with a Detroit Bullet Trap in the basement and many days shot 50 to 100 rounds with the 22 and, then, 45 caliber pistols I had acquired. At my family's farm in Virginia, I asked for a skeet machine for my birthday, and with the 12 gauge shotgun I had been given by a family friend, who hoped I would go duck and goose hunting with him, began shooting trap and skeet. To the great disappointment of several men, who knew me as a boy, and many more contemporaries, but to the quiet approval of my father, an anesthesiologist who was the commanding officer of a forward combat hospital in the CBI theater throughout WWII, I had zero interest in hunting. No interest at all in killing things, just the precision of marksmanship.
When I was drafted into the Army while working at National Geographic after college I scored the highest marks they had seen in several years on the rifle range at Fort Gordon, and the Army in its way pressed me to go to sniper school. I chose instead to become a medic, and when I got out of the army in 1964 having seen what guns do to the human body, I went home, took the 37 weapons I had accumulated over the years, went out in my family's boat and threw them into the Chesapeake Bay. I have not fired a weapon since.
But as I look back now I realize how strongly boys in America are oriented to take up weapons, and it has only gotten worse as this report describes.
A young gun enthusiast looks over a Smith & Wesson pistol at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting & Exhibit on May 21, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty
When Nikolas Cruz, a then-19-year-old from Parkland, Florida, stormed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 with a semi-automatic rifle, gunning down fourteen students and three staff in roughly six minutes, those unfamiliar with Cruz’s personal history felt like the tragedy came out of nowhere. Cruz, like so many mass shooters, had exhibited all of the signs of someone to watch out for long before. Prosecutors found that Cruz had a well-documented affinity for guns and violence. He started playing violent video games as a middle school student, and sought to be a U.S. Army ranger, allegedly telling a family friend that he “wanted to join the military to kill people.” Cruz was described by friends and family as being a highly impulsive teen prone to emotional outbursts often ending in violence. He was also known as an avid user of social media — particularly Instagram — which for years […]
Joe Hayden, Professor of Journalism at the University of Memphis - Salon
Stephan: One of the several evil manifestations of America's gun psychosis is that frightened men, particularly frightened White men, see guns as the solution to relieve their fears. As a result, the only real terrorism issue we face in the United States is frightened White men who organize into clubs and gangs they wrongly style militias. And we should be concerned these men and the women who hang around with them are very dangerous.
I once lived next door to a guy in Memphis who owned more than a hundred firearms, some of which were strewn around his two-bedroom house and even lying on the kitchen counter. I saw them when he asked me to come over one afternoon to help him move his 700-pound gun safe.
Neil, as I’ll call him, also kept two large dogs, one of which was a cane corso that was so unpredictable it couldn’t be allowed near his two young children. Neil was a nice guy but perpetually anxious and nervous, which in turn made me uneasy about his family’s safety. I worried about a gun accident or one of the dogs getting loose and mauling a passerby.
The fact is, there are a lot of Neils in America — white guys in a near-constant state of fear about their personal safety. And rather than being merely pitiful, guys like Neil are actually dangerous.
They’re the hyper-armed neighbors with itchy trigger fingers, who are convinced they’ll be the victims of a home invasion; who treat any Black or brown person as an imminent threat; who see foreign terrorists behind every bush; who believe the government is trying to poison them, plant […]
U.S. Energy Information Administration Staff, - U.S. Energy Information Administration
Stephan: Here is some excellent good news about our moving out of the carbon energy era. In spite of the corruption and lobbyists, it is happening.
Offshore wind holds great promise as a source of clean, domestic, renewable energy that can meet the needs of communities along the nation’s coastlines. And — according to the Offshore Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition, written by a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) — the U.S. offshore wind industry made gale-force gains in 2020 and early 2021. The offshore wind pipeline grew 24% in that time period, with 35,324 megawatts (MW) now in various stages of development.
And that is not all. Increased industry interest, combined with the Biden administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power by 2030, may propel the offshore wind energy industry to greater heights in the coming years.
The U.S. offshore wind pipeline includes two operating projects: the 30-MW Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island and the 12-MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project. The 800-MW Vineyard Wind 1 project near Massachusetts became the first fully approved, commercial, offshore wind energy […]
Stephan: When I look at the current social outcome data I see several alarming trends in the younger generations that hold major implications for America's future. Our corrupted politicians and the corporate rich don't yet understand that the failure to properly address climate change, added to our obscene wealth inequality, and the male dominant White supremacy that plagues our society is causing a major shift in the attitudes of young Americans, and a country whose young see no happy future for themselves is a country destroying its future.
Youth activists march on Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, on June 28, 2021. Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly/ZUMA
Four in 10 young people around the world are hesitant to have children as a result of the climate crisis, and fear that governments are doing too little to prevent climate catastrophe, a poll in 10 countries has found.
Nearly six in 10 young people, aged 16 to 25, were very or extremely worried about climate change, according to the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people, published on Tuesday. A similar number said governments were not protecting them, the planet, or future generations, and felt betrayed by the older generation and governments.
Three-quarters agreed with the statement “the future is frightening”, and more than half felt they would have fewer opportunities than their parents. Nearly half reported feeling distressed or anxious about the climate in a way that was affecting their daily lives and functioning.
The poll of about 10,000 young people covered Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the US. It was paid for by the […]
